its young.

The ring ouzel, however, is not with us a common bird, though more frequent in our northern and western counties than elsewhere. It is well known in some parts of Devonshire, is a bird of the Peak of Derbyshire, and in Scotland resorts to the Grampian Hills. We could wish that it were more generally distributed, for its song is said to be very sweet. The bird, which is often seen in Norway, Mr. Hewitson describes as frequenting many of the wooded rocks of that country, and enlivening the most bleak and desolate islands with its sweet song. He says that it shares with the redwing the name of nightingale, and often delighted him in his midnight rambles. In France it is called the mountain blackbird, and it is in some of our counties known as the white-breasted blackbird. It has been thus by a poet contrasted with the blackbird, which it is much like in form and habits, only that it never chooses for its haunt the inclosed and inhabited districts.

"From stone to stone the ouzel flits along,

Startling the linnet from the hawthorn bough:
While on the elm-tree, overshadowing deep
The low-roof'd cottage white, the blackbird sits
Cheerily hymning the awaken'd year."

The ring ouzel places its nest near the stream, sometimes sheltered by a bank, or by some clump of large foliage; but often the wanderer over the moorland may see it scarcely hidden by the branches of the ling, or lying quite exposed to view, among the heather bells or roseate heath. The form and materials of this little structure are similar to those of the blackbird, and the eggs, too, resemble, both in size and colour, those of our early songster. Bechstein says that its voice is sweeter than that of our favourite, though some notes are hoarser and deeper; but few naturalists agree with him, and it is by others compared to that of the missel-thrush. The bird sings usually from the top of some crag or stone.

The food of the ring ouzel consists of snails, insects, hawthorn berries, and various fruits; and when it first returns to us in spring, it eats many ivy berries. During autumn it sometimes comes to gardens for the fruit, and about the end of October it is seen along our southern coasts in flocks of from twenty to thirty, ready for its departure. Mr. Yarrell thinks that these birds cross the Channel to France and Spain, and thence to Africa, where they pass the winter; while he

considers that flocks from the eastern counties probably cross to Germany. It differs from other thrushes in this peculiarity, that it is as fat in the spring as in the autumn, while they, as well as most small birds, are very lean in the early

season.

The male ring ouzel is a very spirited bird, and Mr. Thompson relates an anecdote which proves it to be ready to attack, even when there would seem no excuse for its pugnacity. This gentleman was walking in Crow-glen, near Belfast, with a pointer dog in advance, when two male ring ouzels rushed wildly screaming around the dog, at a few inches from his head. The dog seemed perplexed as to what he should do, and gave many an earnest and pleading look at his master, as if for advice in the difficulty. Finding this useless, he at length ran up to him; but the fearless birds, no way discouraged by the presence of the narrator and his two companions, followed, and flew so near that they might have struck them with their hands. "At the beginning of the onset," says this writer, "a female bird appeared as if inciting the males forward, and remained so long as they were attaining the highest pitch of violence, and then, like

another heroine, retired to another eminence to be spectatress of the fray.' Had they been a pair of birds protecting their young, or assuming similar artifice to the lapwing in withdrawing attention from their nest,-in which the ring ouzel is said to be an adept,-the circumstance would perhaps be unworthy of notice; but they were both male birds in adult plumage. The chase of the dog was continued a considerable way down the glen, and for fully fifteen or twenty minutes."

But the deep secluded glen, where the stream rushes rapidly through the water-flowers and grasses, or dashes over the stones or against the rocks, in its course watering the green mosses which cover them into a richer greenness; the quiet nook of earth, where the smoke rarely rises against the blue sky, is a home for another species of ouzel, one which is more frequent too, the Water Ouzel, or Dipper* (Cinclus aquaticus). Even in the dreary season, when the trees are bare of

* The Dipper is about seven inches in length. The head and neck are umber-brown; the rest of the upper parts and lower belly nearly black; chin and throat white, merging into chestnut-brown on the breast: the beak and feet dark brown.